In the Shade of the Sacred Tree
by Bread Head
Summary: After the death of the Shikon Jewel when the chasm of time once again separates Inuyasha and Kagome by five hundred years, it becomes clear that their fates are more intricately intertwined than they'd ever imagined.
1. Preface

**.**

Preface

*Note: I've gone through and edited/bettered each of the chapters a bit.

Schrodinger's Toast here. So. I recently rediscovered my love of this show by accident. And believe it or not I actually never even knew that there was the Final Act season. It's been _such_ a long time since I've watched. I still haven't had time to watch all of of them (there are so many...) but I couldn't resist watching the last two. And while I loved it I felt they lacked a certain.. _umph_ that the rest of the series had. In the end it was wrapped up very neatly and quickly and without any repercussions or consequences. It was too simple. I know it's idealistic and I know it's literally called "a feudal fairytale" but fairytale endings take many forms.

Anyway, I felt the need to put a proper spin on the kind of ending that I felt the entire series had been leading up to: an ending with a little more flair, a bit more tragedy (**Shakespearean, **to be clear), a splash more love, a hint more obstacle, and the barest pinch more fairytale. One big final umph. I couldn't help but begin to write it when the idea popped into my head, so I hope you guys like it because this idea has gotten such a hold of me it's more real than the actual end of the story! **T****his picks up around the beginning of the very last episode and overwrites everything from there on.**

*Necessary disclaimer: I'm serious when I say I haven't seen every episode. Don't hold it against me if I misuse some terminology or if I miss some tiny thing. I have everything else down pat. Feel free to correct me in a review if I make a mistake. That being said, I will be using some creative license to slightly alter certain small facets of things, but all are done for the sake of story and none are intrusive or overtly noticeable.


	2. Meet me

_._

_._

_Meet me, love, __meet here with me_

_where branches rise and roots run deep._

_Our stay is fleeting to ancient leaves_

_who bathe us in shade of the sacred tree._

_._

_._

(Meet me)

.

.

There one moment, gone the next.

She hadn't even a moment to celebrate their victory. A smile had only just begun to break through the disbelief and onto her face as she stood blinking in the sunlight, hardly daring to put her faith in the incredible truth of it. The long fight was over. They had won.

Then before her relief had yet fully emerged a chill wind had blown. It sliced through her and she fell back and back and back into darkness, into nothing, and was gone without ever knowing what hit her. The last thing she heard as her basic senses began to fail was a familiar voice screaming her name in anguish.

And then she was here. She was Nowhere.

Desperately she tried to answer that anguished cry but found she no longer had a body. She no longer had a voice. No lungs, no heart, no anything. She was just _there_...

And then, with a sudden violent ferocity unrivaled by anything she'd experienced in her life, the empty place assailed her. What felt like a hundred million watts of hatred flashed out, not in a physical sense but in the deepest sense imaginable, an inconceivable darkness that reared back and and flung itself at the deepest part of her with a cold desperation: past any body if indeed she had one left to her, past her mind, past even her heart with its wealth of emotion, and past her very self. It went straight for her soul. Her essence. Her Being. But before she even had time to feel the bite of mortality, something else happened. It was when she felt the immediate backlash against that screeching talon that drove toward her heart that she knew where she was. An equal and opposite wave met the tidal force of hatred and they were a clashing of titans, a white and black, two halves of a turbulent whole with Kagome hopelessly choking in the middle, gasping not for breath but for _life_.

She knew where she was. It was so _obvious_. She was smack in the middle of an age old war. The two unseen forces that have plagued her every moment since coming to this era. Embodied here centuries ago in a last act of defiance from both sides, a battle frozen in time, the very essence of the war itself, capsuled forever, doomed to fight on and on until the end of time.

Kagome had been exiled to the inner chaos of the Shikon Jewel.

If she had a voice with which to scream in frustration and sadness, she would. If she could mourn her fate loudly, she would have, and she would have speculated why she'd been handed this fate just when everything had at last gone right. Was it Naraku? With his dying breath did the spiteful bastard send her here?

Or was she simply doomed to this fate from the beginning of time, tied to the fate of this jewel since before her birth?

Even now at the end was her fate still so beyond her control? Every fiber in her rebelled at the thought.

But she had no means to voice this defiance and so what came from her was a violent push, a powerful wave that rocked back the tidal forces which crushed her between them. The shift was immediate. The fragile balance had been upset. Kagome had tipped the scales for the first time since the jewel had been forged In blood and death and sacrifice.

There was a monumental undulation, like someone had swept the rug from under her. Suddenly the wall of black and the wall of white became instead a great spattering of static, frantic in their sudden frenzy, like a cloud of insects as an object passes through their midst and scatters them. Kagome found that quite suddenly she had to fight with all her strength to keep from being torn apart by the fresh viciousness of the battle, and she threw her whole soul into it, into the hopeless task of tipping the scales permanently in her favor.

She almost felt she could give a name to the force she sided with as she reluctantly stepped up and found herself taking the dominating role of offense against the pressing darkness. _Have you been here fighting all this time, priestess? _she thought sadly. _Will I be here forever too, or only till I'm too tired to go on? _She felt she could last quite awhile. She was strong. She had people for whom to be strong... though for the life of her she could not remember their names. Images of their faces were no longer conjurable. She was forgetting. All she knew was this—this darkness, this duty, this unending battle.

And it felt like only moments of fighting before she grew weary. She grew so weary, so quickly. It wasn't a physical exhaustion, or a mental one. It was an exhaustion that went down to her core. It was an exhaustion that shook her faith.

And she began to remember.

Bits and pieces, here and there among the chaos. It came to her suspiciously: not who she was or where she came from, but the recollection that the Shikon Jewel was supposed to _grant wishes_. Your heart's desire. It was impossible to know whether she actually recalled this on her own or whether it was something the hateful force was feeding to her in a ploy for her destruction. But it rang of truth, and she was shaken from her solid ground.

She _wanted_ to wish. It could put an end to this if she wished right. She would not survive this ordeal otherwise. So she would do it. Damn if it wasn't her own weakness threatening to topple her, but she could hardly care. There was no one around to impress, no pride or dignity to uphold, no anything. There was only herself and the unrelenting force of darkness, and the tentative possibility that one simple wish might save her from an eternity of facing it alone...

She would wish, and then she would finally rest.

But every time she came close to wishing something stopped her. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was as if something warm was gripping her briefly and flooding her with assurance. It was in these moments that she thought she might be able to do this, that she might be able to keep her hold on the priestess's mantle and fight the battle she'd started until the end of days. She could do it. Somehow, impossibly, though her well of strength had long since run dry, she continued, on and on.

On and on, beyond the end of days.

Kagome _could_ do this forever; she was strong enough. She knew it now.

But she wouldn't have to.

.

.

Inuyasha stood cursing vainly at the sky, the sweet taste of his long-awaited victory having been scarred beyond recognition with tragedy in those final agonizing moments. He hacked at the damp soil with his sword, clawing away great stretches of earth with no regard for any of the bystanders.

"Inuyasha—"

_"What happened to her?"_

But he allowed no time for response as he continued his string of expletives and haphazard sword swings, which felled another two neighboring trees.

"Inuyasha _stop!" _It was only then that he fell silent, and it was to everyone's everlasting astonishment that it was _Shippo_ who had finally gotten through. The kit was crouched by Inuyasha's feet and looked up at him with wide, wet eyes, pleading. "You have to—h-help her," Shippo moaned, rubbing at one eye. Inuyasha once told him men don't show their tears, but Shippo didn't want to be a man today. He was a child who had lost his mother all over again.

Inuyasha stared down at Shippo with a torn expression—something between pity and compassion—before his features contorted to wrath. "I would if I knew _how, _you stupid idiot!" He picked Shippo up by the tail and shook him. "What do you think I've been doing? Wracking my fucking brain here!"

"It looked like ye were destroying the sacred forest," Kaede observed, who had come up to meet them not long after Kagome's arrow had ended everything. "I did not realize ye were thinking."

"Shut the fuck up!" Inuyasha roared, for once in no mood to play nice with the old hag. "Everyone just shut up!"

"Inuyasha," Miroku warned, effectively deflecting his friend's wrath from the innocent Kaede onto himself. "Please calm yourself. Kagome is still breathing and she still has a pulse. We will figure out what befell her and find a way to save her."

"Oh, cheer up, Inuyasha." It was Sango who spoke softly as she rose from Kagome's side where she lay limp in the grass by the Bone Eater's well. "We've beaten more formidable odds with our hands tied behind our backs. We'll find a way to wake her." Sango's approach was surprisingly gentle as she laid an arm to rest around his shoulders, which was so far out of her normal physical comfort zone that it was a loud testament to the kinship she felt for him. Even in his rage, Inuyasha seemed to realize this and was far more gentle when he brushed her off than he had been with Shippo.

"Yeah, I know," he growled, but the flames of his fury had been reduced to dangerous white coals. Not gone, but under control. "You don't have to tell me. I know."

Miroku hastily scrambled to the side to make room as Inuyasha approached the well and Kagome. Inuyasha paid him no mind as he fell to his knees beside her and pulled her upper body unceremoniously onto his lap, cradling her head against his. His ears twitched at the faint whispers that passed between the villagers who had come to watch the scene from the edge of the clearing, but other than that he betrayed no sign he had heard. He couldn't give a damn if he tried.

"Are you g-gonna sa-ave h-her?"

Shippo had crawled up onto Kagome's stomach and was peering teary-eyed at Inuyasha through the silver strands of his hair. Apprehension gripped him and he flinched as Inuyasha turned to him, fully expecting to be flung away.

He did consider it, but only fleetingly. Instead Inuyasha let his anger recede for just a moment and he regarded Shippo with haunted eyes. He couldn't lie to the kid. Not after everything that had happened. He couldn't afford to give him false hope; he couldn't even afford that to himself. "I don't..." he paused, grinding his teeth together. All his prowess, and here he was utterly useless. "I don't know where she _went_ this time!" He couldn't fucking chase after her and save her easily kidnappable ass like he always did. She was beyond his reach.

A murky blue had spilled across the sky from the east and was clashing with the fading red on the horizon when Miroku's distinct papery scent filled the clearing again. Inuyasha paid him no more attention than he'd paid any of the others that had tried to move him that afternoon and evening. Let them try. He needed someone to take his anger out on anyway.

"Go away, monk, unless you want my claws up your—"

"I'm only retrieving Shippo," Miroku sighed. He lifted the little fox from the grass easily, cautious not to wake him. His puffy cheeks were still wet.

"Good." He wouldn't look up at either of them.

"She would be better off in Kaede's hut where we can watch her in case—"

"In case _what_, exactly?" he snapped.

Miroku only sighed again, much to Inuyasha's fury. The monk had a way of sighing that made it sound like he thought he knew so much better than everyone else. If you asked Inuyasha, the stupid lecher was about as wise as a street performing monkey. But Miroku sounded very sure of himself when he added, "You must know that the rest of us feel as bereft as you, Inuyasha. It would do you good to join us at Kaede's."

_"Bereft?" _he screamed. If Kagome had only been sleeping on his lap then she definitely would have woken now as the sound of his voice echoed through the surrounding forest. "No one is bereft of anything! She's still right here!"

"Yes," Miroku agreed quietly as he scrambled to keep ahold of Shippo as the poor kistune woke with a start. "You're right, of course."

"So. If you'd kindly get the fuck out of here."

"But I wanna stay with Kagome!" Shippo wailed as Miroku turned his back on the Bone Eater's well.

"Not tonight, Shippo. He'll bring her back to us but for now it's best if we leave him. It's no use trying to reason with him when he's like this. You know that."

If that was supposed to be bait, Inuyasha wasn't biting. He waited till the sound of their footsteps faded to nothing, glad to see them go. He didn't want them here. He didn't want _anyone_ here except for her, but he couldn't _reach_ her! He'd failed her, and that knowledge was an echoing gong on the interior of his skull. Every time the sting of it began to ebb, she would breath again, so _unnaturally_ slowly, and the gong would roll. Failure. Failure. Failure. There at the finish line he had let her down. Inuyasha had won but had lost everything anyway.

And he didn't even know _how_.

One second he'd known that Naraku was dead. The next second he knew that a _meido_ was opening behind Kagome, and he only had time to scream her name futilely before it flashed through her and she collapsed to the ground, utterly lifeless for all intents and purposes.

Only she wasn't lifeless. He could her heart heart beating. The slow rhythm of her breathing was that constant painful reminder as she moved faintly against him. _Where are you Kagome? _All their problems should have shattered with the jewel. And the jewel was nowhere to be found, so then what _gives?_

Somewhere in the woods an owl called out. He wasn't sure when the moon had risen but there it was, half full. In his current distress he couldn't remember whether it was on its way to a full or a new moon. The realization would have shocked him if he'd been able to think about anything other than Kagome for more than a fraction of a second before she recalled his attention simply by existing there in his arms.

Slowly, as if not to wake her, he stood, scooping her up against his chest. The light of the moon shone through the highest branches and lit her face. He knelt, leapt, and disappeared into the trees.

Who knew why he'd come here, of all places. He didn't waste much thought on it. It just felt right. He didn't want to be by the well, that awful thing that was always taking her away from him. This place, though admittedly addled with raw memories, felt far more comfortable. It was here that he met her, in the shade of this tree. And it was probably stupid, but he felt closer to her here than he had had by the well, as if at any moment she would open her eyes and yawn.

The trunk pressed against his back as he settled onto the thick roots that had long since receded into the ground after she'd freed him. Things had been so simple back then. So black and white. But nothing was ever simple again, not after her. Frowning angrily, he brushed her hair away from her face. She looked serene. At peace, somehow. _Did I look like this when you first saw me here pinned to the tree?_ He'd gladly take another arrow to the chest and another fifty years of sleep if it brought her back. What the hell _happened?_

A sudden glint brighter than all the moving splashes of moonlight between the shadows of the leaves caught his eye and caught his breath in his chest. His hand moved hesitantly from her face to her hand, and as he pulled her fingers delicately apart he stopped. There in her grasp was the completed Shikon Jewel, resplendent in the darkness of the forest.

All at once he understood.

Fleetingly he thought of the last time he had held the complete jewel beneath this tree. Now she held it, and she'd been the one put to sleep over it. Only, it wouldn't be fifty year sentence for her. It would be an eternity. At least until someone destroyed the jewel for good. Yeah, well. Not while he still had something to say about it. He'd be damned before he let her suffer that.

He pulled her closer, bringing her back flush against his chest so he could reach beneath her and dig Tetsaiga out of its sheath at his side. Maybe this was stupid. Maybe he was making rash decisions like always - but then, that's why he'd wanted to be alone with her. He'd had a feeling it would come to something this drastic and he didn't need anyone going all soft and telling him not to do it. Better to just take the plunge, no regrets or misgivings. He had enough of those and wouldn't be accruing any more.

His head rested back against the tree trunk and he allowed himself a singular indulgent sniff of her hair as he settled her slack body against him. She smelled so like _Kagome_ that he nearly choked on it.But there was no guilt when he pulled away. It was anyone's guess whether he'd be smelling her ever again. _That_ depended on whether this idiot idea of his came to fruition or not, and he'd be damned if he went wherever the hell he was going (and the idea crossed his mind that it might well be hell itself) with any other scent as the last on his mind.

Briefly, he wondered whether he'd gone insane.

The Inuyasha of fifty three years ago when he was pinned to this very tree would have sneered down at him, condemning his willingness to risk his very survival on a mere hunch just to save a friend as the ultimate weakness. His face hardened, shame flooding him, shame of what he used to be. He was stupid back then. He knew now that it wasn't no damn weakness. It was strength, damn it! So _fuck_ old Inuyasha. _He_ didn't have any friends and he was dead now and _this_ Inuyasha knew exactly what he wanted, so he wasn't gonna linger under this damn tree any longer because he had a chance of saving the one person who brought actual meaning into what he'd always taken for granted as life.

Gently he moved his hand under Kagome's, lifting her arm out in front of the both of them. Her fingers fell slack and the little pink jewel glistened benignly, emitting far more of its own light than it was reflecting. It rocked and then settled into the crook of her palm.

Inuyasha raised his sword before them. It resonated under his touch, glowing brightly and then dimming again into a darkly glittering display, coursing through with the power of the _meido zengetsuha_. His sword always knew what he wanted it to do.

With a clean swish he brought it down onto the jewel and there was a brief blinding light as the jewel opened wide—and then dark, dark, and darker dark as the _meido_ drew him in deeper with the climbing weight of a thousand worlds just as the promise of a siren drowns even the surest of sailors, steadily, then suddenly, until there was nothing at all. He was gone.


	3. Wait here

.

.

_Wait here, love, __wait here, for we_

_will surely meet if watch we keep,_

_unwavering as these many leaves_

_in the soothing shade of the sacred tree._

_._

_._

(Wait here)

.

.

Shippo skidded to a stop in the dirt and turned to the east, straining his ears. Someone was singing.

_Wait here, love... wait here for we_

He sat back on his haunches, spellbound by the soft voice, like a lone ringing bell... when the owner of it came into view from behind a tree.

_"Will surely meet if_ _-_ oh!" The little girl froze, hands pressed to both cheeks, flushing magenta. "Oh my gosh, how embarrassing."

"Wait, don't _stop_," Shippo complained loudly. "I barely got to hear any of it."

The girl squeezed her eyes closed and shifted her weight between her feet. "I was only singing because I thought no one was listening, you little spy. Goodbye." She waved hysterically and turned tail. "Gotta go home, nice meeting you."

"Hey, do you live in the village nearby?" He raced after her, suddenly very excited to meet her and paying no mind to her continued attempt to outrun him.

"Not that it's any of your business, but yes, I do." Finally she gave up and slowed her frantic pace, panting for breath. "I've only just moved here... Oh no, I hope I'm not lost."

On cue she looked around at the trees warily, but Shippo laughed. They were on a path. Not to mention _he_ could never get lost in this forest, no matter how long he'd been away. "It's okay, you won't get lost with me."

"Oh yeah? Are you like a little dog demon or something?" He thought she was joking but she bent over and tugged at his tail with a curious look on her face. "Can you smell the way?"

"I - no, I am not a dog demon," he huffed indignantly, "I'm a _fox_, get it? Fox."

"Can fox demons smell the way too?"

"Well," he admitted, "actually I-" but he paused, unwilling to delve into the explanation of his complicated relationship with the nearby village. "Yeah," he sighed. "I can smell the way."

"Oh, good!" she breathed, and began to pull him along beside her. "I was getting worried there for a second!"

"Yeah yeah. So what, do you like the village?" he probed. "How is it? Is your.. are you settling okay?" He bit his tongue as he almost said "_is your family.." _

Ever since the death of Naraku and the completion of the Shikon Jewel all sorts of people had been coming from all over to make a home in Kaede's village. Shippo thought it was kinda stupid and dangerous to want to be around the jewel since it was what had uprooted most of them from their homes anyway... But he supposed people wanted to be around the ones who took down Naraku because it made them feel safe.

That was _surely_ why orphaned children began to show up at the village and hadn't stopped. One of the old houses had been converted into a temporary home for them because there were so many. Who was to say this girl wasn't one of them? Shippo wasn't _stupid_, after all. He knew when to shut up, unlike _some_ people who ran their mouths and had no tact at all.

A pair of white ears twitched in his memory, as if Shippo had said the insult aloud and they had heard it.

He slowed to a stop in the middle of the path and sighed. That silly thought came so naturally, even after all this time.

The small girl had stopped too and was staring at him. As always, he felt of rather inadequate size being eye to eye with a human girl no older than six or seven, but at least he'd done a _bit_ of growing over the past couple years. He couldn't wait to see the looks on Miroku's and Sango's faces when they saw he grew _two whole inches_ since the last time he visited. But he didn't want to go to them just yet. An old wound had pulled itself open and he didn't think he could face them yet, especially the little twins who continued to think he was their brother no matter how many times he or Miroku or Sango tried to say otherwise. Shippo didn't want to look weak in front of them. He was supposed to be the strong one.

"Hey... What was that song you were singing, anyway?" he asked sadly, stalling for time while he composed himself.

The girl blinked. "Oh, I don't know."

"...Oh. That's okay."

"Hey, hey! Don't look so sad, I'm sorry, I'll tell you." Her wide eyes told him she'd completely misinterpreted the reason for his sadness, but he didn't mind. "I just wasn't supposed to sing it to anyone, not yet anyway."

"Huh? Not yet?" She had successfully gotten his full attention.

She blushed and smoothed out a few folds on her dusty kimono. "It's supposed to be for the festival. They came and asked me if I would sing it since everyone's always asking me to sing stuff."

"A festival?"

"_The_ festival!" He glowered momentarily, thinking he was gonna give Miroku and Sango a big lecture for not writing to him and inviting him to this so called festival, when she continued. "The festival in honor of _them_," she whispered reverently, peering around at the trees as though they themselves could be listening.

"Them..?"

The girl smacked herself in the forehead and laughed. "Of course, you don't even live here. You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? Come on, I'll show you, little fox!" Shippo allowed himself to be led off the path through the patch of bushes beyond the edge, and he found he already knew where she was taking him.

He hadn't been in this part of the forest for a very long time.

"Don't be scared, come on!" the girl urged him when he stayed behind at the edge of the clearing, staring intently at the tree. He swallowed thickly and didn't fuss when she returned and grabbed his hand again to pull him along with her into the open.

"Aren't they beautiful?" she whispered, pressing her hands to her face again.

Shippo's face fell. "Yeah," he agreed, and could say no more.

The two of them looked the same as the day he last saw them, when he'd finally made his peace and left them for good after weeks of never straying farther from the edge of the clearing, and even longer months of lingering in the village and visiting every day.

They were sitting on the gnarled roots at the base of the tree. Inuyasha leaned against the trunk and Kagome leaned against him, his hand loosely draped over hers. He couldn't see it now but he knew the sacred jewel was there pressed between their hands as it had been for three long years. The roots had snaked up over Inuyasha's ankles, grasses had sprung up all around them, and fallen leaves littered their still bodies. But other than that they looked the same, if maybe a little older.

Shippo took a couple tentative steps closer, wishing to curl up on them like he so often had, but unwilling to do it in front of this strange little girl. His lip quivered and his hands curled into fists.

Inuyasha's other hand was still wrapped around the handle of his sword, which had changed even less than they had. It was even still transformed in its more formidable state where it really did look like a fang freshly plucked from his fathers mouth, giving the vague impression that Inuyasha was somehow still mid battle. The awesome sight of the transformed Tetsaiga still in Inuyasha's grasp, though grown over with moss and speckled now with dried mud, was something that had often comforted Shippo. Though he couldn't say why.

"They're under a spell," the girl whispered.

Shippo wondered bitterly why she bothered whispering. They weren't about to wake if she raised her voice. He'd tried that so much the first few days that he'd lost his voice for a whole week.

"Some people in the village say they were lovers," she continued conspiratorially, shooting Shippo a know-it-all glance laced around the edges with sap. "My friend Yui said that the girl fell under a spell and the boy was so brokenhearted that he tried to kill himself and he fell under the spell too. Isn't that the most tragic thing?"

Shippo's eyebrow twitched and his fists tightened further as he struggled not to yell at the girl. It wasn't _her_ fault her friend was an idiot. Instead of blowing up at her he stalked forward and began to sweep the brittle gathered leaves off of his friends. With tenderness he disentangled a twig from Kagome's hair. She always got so cross when he pulled it by accident...

"Hey, you can't touch them!"

"Watch me," Shippo gloated. "It's not like they care, anyway." He started heaving at the roots that had taken hold over Inuyasha's ankles, but they were too thick to budge, and besides, that girl was hitting him on the head now.

"You cut that out or I won't tell you about the festival or let you hear the rest of that song or anything at all!"

"I don't care," Shippo pouted bitterly, "I don't wanna hear the song anymore now that I know it's about Inuyasha and Kagome."

"Fine, then you can just - oh." Her fire went out immediately and she blinked rapidly at him. "Did you say Inuyasha and Kagome? So you have heard of them after all? Why don't you want to hear my song?" she added quietly, hurt.

"Because," he grumbled loudly. So maybe he wasn't _that_ good at having tact. "The song is _stupid_. Inuyasha and Kagome loved each other but they weren't _lovers_. And on top of that, Inuyasha didn't _kill_ himself you stupid idiot. He just followed her wherever the heck she went to _save her _because that's what he_ always does _because he's_ so stupid _and he_ loves her,_ which is a _sorry__ combination _when you're Inuyasha with a big dumb idea in your big dumb head!" He turned his glare then at the offender, Inuyasha, whose stupid hand was still gripping his sword. Not for the first time Shippo wondered just what the heck Inuyasha had figured out and what the heck he had done and what the heck was _taking_ so long.

But after a moment Shippo's expression softened, as it always did.

"But he always brought her back before so I know he's still trying." His sword proved that. If he was gone for good, Tetsaiga would be in its useless form. "So I don't appreciate the stupid sentimental love songs or any stupid sentimental festival in memory of them! Because they're _coming back_ and if Inuyasha finds out someone's been writing _love_ songs about him he's gonna be _insufferable, _and I'm gonna be the one who gets the brunt of it!"

The girl's lips pressed together into a thin line in the ringing silence following Shippo's outburst and she clenched her fists at her sides. Shippo would have been sorry if he wasn't so distraught.

"You must be Shippo, then," she said curtly. When he looked surprised she added, "Miroku and Sango said you'd be coming to visit soon. They also said you were _nice_," she ended loudly, raising her volume for the first time since nearing the tree.

Hold on. "You know Miroku and Sango?" he said, despite himself.

"Yeah, the festival was _their idea," _she huffed, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Sango is the one who asked me if I'd make some music to go along with that pretty poem Miroku wrote."

Shippo took pause at that, his anger deflating quickly. "Wait... Miroku wrote it?" It couldn't be that stupid if Miroku wrote it, right? He wouldn't write something lecherous and dumb... Not about _them_, anyway. But still, Shippo folded his arms and set his face into a firm disapproving frown. "Inuyasha won't like it. Miroku ought to know better by now."

"Will Kagome like it?"

He opened his eyes, drawn by the scarcely disguised laughter in her voice. He wasn't angry though, because she'd finally taken the hint and had begun to use the future tense instead of the past. "If I know Kagome, she'll be embarrassed but she'll secretly like it."

The girls smile softened, and her gaze shifted to the silent pair they shared the meadow with. She chewed her lip and fussed about with her kimono. "You knew them pretty well, huh?"

Shippo was reluctant to follow her gaze. They never looked different no matter how many times he looked. "Yeah," he sighed. "_Too_ well, if you ask me."

"Miroku and Sango come here almost every day."

"Still?"

"Yes."

Guilt burrowed into him momentarily as he mulled that over.

"Hey, Shippo?"

He glanced at her sidelong, raising an eyebrow.

"Would you... like to come to the festival? It's tonight, so you're just in time."

Hmm. He squeezed his eyes shut again, trying to conjure a reason why not. "If Miroku's gonna give a eulogy or something you can count me out—"

"No, no," the girl laughed, once again pressing her hands to her full rosy cheeks in unabashed mirth. "It's not a funeral for the dead, you silly little fox. It's a celebration for the living! It's an ode to what may or may not come to pass. Kaede is calling it the Festival of Possibility." She must have noticed Shippo's obvious confusion then because she smiled and pointed to the two sleeping beneath the tree. "See, from here.. anything could happen. They _could_ stay asleep forever... but they could also wake up five seconds from now. It's true!" she defended fiercely, furrowing her eyebrows at Shippo. "And if even a handful of the crazy stories Kaede has told me are true, then I think if you wait long enough then anything that _can_ happen _will_ happen."

_Anything that can happen will happen? _Shippo was reluctant to encourage such a fallible claim in someone so young, but he wanted to believe in what she was saying. After all, it was what he'd been trying to convince himself of every day since his adoptive family slipped out of his life. He wanted to believe they would come back any second.

Still, though he wouldn't admit it to anyone, he was clouded _always_ with doubt. Even now he was doubtful, even with the girl's honest words echoing in his mind when he bounded after her as she skipped back into the shelter of the woods in the direction of the village, humming that lilting melancholy tune he had heard her singing before. If at that moment he had glanced back toward the sacred tree he would have seen that the girl had struck a rich strain of golden truth. As Shippo and the little girl vanished into the trees, the giant sword which had remained unchanged for three long years glowed briefly with familiar light before dimming and leaving behind a smaller, battered, and altogether unimpressive blade which would look less than ordinary to the average observer. For some unknowable reason, Inuyasha's Tetsaiga had reverted.

All around, birds and cicadas fell silent. Even the soft sussurus of the leaves in the canopy above went unheard. The surrounding wood held its breath in anticipation as it waited to see what would happen next.

.

.

One thought was on his mind as he entered the void: finding Kagome.

But when the dark enveloped him it began to devour him with such pure ferocity that it forced that thought from his head with instant effectiveness, like gale force winds clearing a loose scroll from a temple. All at once it hit him. The tidal wave of energy was so raw it threatened to rip him to shreds. A familiar and deep instinct, primeval, _demonic_, reared its dragon head inside him and roared, taking control more decisively than it ever had in his life. With one-track determination he drove the tidal wave back with all the power he possessed.

So: Inuyasha was thrown head first into the now-recently-losing side of a centuries old battle, and had but one choice. Even the playing field or die. Unable to fight it in such a state, unable to even understand what was happening, he succumbed fully to the demon inside him and its survival instinct as it flared out against the opposition in the effort to save him.

He was too far gone to remember what brought him here, his conscious mind too far beneath the demon to remember that the opposition here wasn't just another foe. It was Kagome. That tidal wave of pure energy that threatened to destroy him was _Kagome_. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but survival.

That internal war that had been raging for hundreds of years found new developments for the first time as the two fresh warriors usurped the front-lines on both sides of the battle. They flew at each other with the hot intensity only found in the souls of the living - something the innermost heart of the jewel had only stolen glimpses at before. They were as matched as rivals could be as they pushed each other back continually, and for a long, long time the war was as it had always been and was always intended to be: a perpetual stalemate.

But there is a gift the living can give themselves which the dead never can give, nor borrow, nor purchase.

That is to say: the living can _change_.

It happened gradually, as does every major continental shift. It began with the barest of communications, so bare that neither realized they were communicating.

After what seemed like a short while, he became aware of a shift in the air, a weakening on the other side, an opening in which to strike... Except he didn't strike, and instead he felt a sudden surge of sympathy for his opponent. By the time he had squashed the feeling of sympathy in order to make his deadly blow, the opponent had already regathered it's strength.

She wanted to wish so she could rest. Except when she came close to wishing for the first time in the hopes of ridding herself of the jewel forever, a sudden inexplicable rush of assurance quelled the desire and spurred her on.

This would happen many, many times before she would finally realize that the source of her reassurance was _him_.

Of course, once she'd realized he was in there with her it was only a simple leap of logic to understand that she'd been fighting _him_. For how long he'd been there she couldn't begin to guess, and of course it wasn't _only_ him she was fighting, but that didn't matter at all. As soon it came to light, as soon as her faceless foe finally had a name and the name was _Inuyasha, _the battle was over before it was over.

It was without any hesitation that she quieted: she laid down her spiritual arms, silenced herself, became still for the first time in a eon. She understood she would be instantly destroyed but staying alive was not worth destroying him, or containing him in the stasis which she herself was contained in. She refused take part in it for one second longer. Maybe she had no control over her own fate, but at least she could gift him control over his. That was enough.

The unceasing battle suddenly ceased as his opponent stilled for the very first time, and every instinct in him screamed to go in for the kill. He was the frontline now, after all, as he had long since taken up the reigns on this side of the battle. No move could be made without him. The two sides of the war writhed in suspense like squirming koi, yin and yang frozen in their chase of each other: the pure side held hostage behind Kagome's soul, unable to attack or defend while she refused to pick up her arms, and the impure side pent up behind Inuyasha's, waiting for the dam between the halves to break at last on Inuyasha's damning word.

But as time stood still inside the jewel, he did not give the word.

Something was gnawing at him and it wormed its way so deep that it cut through the demonic instincts that had overridden every aspect of himself and found its way to the very center of his soul. It wasn't the sound of Kagome's voice as it had sometimes been before because there were no voices here in this strange inbetween. It wasn't even Kagome herself because he was still too far gone to know her.

It was as simple as this: some foundational part of Inuyasha, older than he himself, recognized the sudden stillness on the other side of the battle as surrender. And that one little fact tunneled straight past the demon and found his humanity. Because Inuyasha had something no demon fighting within the Shikon jewel had ever possessed before.

He had mercy, and that changed everything.

The hateful forces waiting behind him to make the final strike they'd so longed for would never have the chance to do so because despite the blood his instincts howled to spill, Inuyasha went against everything in his nature and (in so many words) he too sheathed his sword.

There was a beat of silence. A resonant calm. A single breath of fresh air, of peace, as the two halves washed away from each other without any fanfare, as naturally as a wave recedes from one shore to find another. As the sides faded to nothing they left two people naked briefly on the shore where they could see one another plainer than they ever had before... and, without the need for words, each understood they had saved the other.

The beat of silence passed, and the void turned inside out.

.

.

In the shallow shade under the sacred tree there was suddenly a brilliant light.

Two figures blinked blearily with eyes that hadn't seen the light of day in three years, blinded now by the pink and white rays bleeding from their loosely clasped hands through the cracks in their fingers. The two of them looked at it blankly, the knowledge dawning on them that their actions had directly brought about the end of the jewel in a way no one could have ever imagined was possible.

Inuyasha was the first to withdraw his hand, as though he'd been burned.

"Inu.." Kagome tried to say his name but her voice broke; her throat was infinitely dry and her lips cracked. His response was to drop his sword into the tall grass and throw his arms so tightly around her that the breath was forced from her lungs.

"Don't ever leave me again," he commanded, his face buried in her hair.

The implications of his words didn't surprise her as they once would have—not _now_, after everything they'd been through, after the brief telling glimpse of his soul on that distant shore. No, what was shocking her into silence was the still growing light in the palm of her hand where the jewel used to be, growing brighter yet by impossible degrees. She opened her mouth to reassure him but nothing came out.

"Besides," he added softly, "you should _know_ by now that I'll come looking no matter where you go." There was an undisguised warning in his tone that was grating and harsh but she saw right through it. The familiar reassurance that had kept her so long from wishing on the jewel flooded her. She didn't know why it had taken her so long to realize it was him.

It had _always_ been him, since the very beginning.

But a flare of light that breached her hand and licked down her forearm distracted her again from his words.

"Inuyasha!" Kagome's weak unused voice cracked in her alarm and Inuyasha looked up finally at the strange light left in the wake of the departing Shikon Jewel to notice something was deeply awry. He growled and took a swipe at the light, attempting to knock it from her hand. He didn't know what else to do. But his growl turned into a choked sound as his hand sailed straight through hers. He swiped again and found to his horror that no, he could not touch her hand.

Kagome gasped and flailed, shook her arm, writhed helplessly away from his grasp in her vain attempt to rid herself of the light. He grabbed after her other arm like a lifeline and yanked her back. She wheeled around toward him, twisting through the grass, feeling the stinging tug of it on her legs. A foreign emotion coursed through him when he saw the beginnings of tears welling up in the corners of her eyes when she turned toward in him in despair. It felt like the preview of a thousand years of grief yet to come. She fell on his chest like she had done many times before, only this time one of her arms fell through and she withdrew it with another gasp back to her own chest.

"Don't," he said, his voice strangled in his throat. He didn't know whether he was pleading with Kagome or the light that was swallowing her._ "Don't-_"

But Kagome had a sharp and unwelcome intuitive feeling in her gut but about what was happening. How many times had she wondered before what would happen to her once the jewel was gone? It was only through the jewel's power that she had come to this era in the first place, and now the power was drying up quick like leftover midsummer rain.

"Don't forget me, okay?" she pleaded. The light had spread to her shoulder. It was stupid, a pointless demand. She knew he wouldn't. But she didn't know what else to say. In that moment she wanted the selfish comfort of hearing that she wouldn't be forgotten once she was gone.

He was very close to understanding what was happening, but didn't want to. "Ka_gome." _She was scaring the shit out of him with those tears. He'd been so elated only seconds ago. What the hell went wrong?

Her lips quivered as she struggled for something to say, something worthy enough for an unexpected goodbye she could never have had enough time in the world to prepare for. Words didn't come. She couldn't say it. So instead she moved closer. Any and all reserves she had left were thrown out the window. Gone. She wouldn't have to worry about the repercussions of her actions because all signs pointed glaringly to _I'm never going to see you again... _So she did something she'd only endeavored twice before. The first time was half-forgotten, so surreal it felt almost as though it had never happened; a reckless moment neither had dared mention since in case the other had forgotten. It had been a last resort when she'd thought she was going to lose him if she didn't _do_ something.

The second time was what felt like only weeks ago and had been different in every possible way. There'd been no urgency, no dire situation, no hanging threat that fueled their actions. All there _was_ was the two of them it seemed, sitting alone on her bedroom floor as she leaned up and he bowed his head toward her, hitting her with smoldering gold eyes that had only given her that expression a handful of times and never with this intensity. Strangely she hadn't been nervous at all. There was only this rising sense of light expectation. As if they were simply saying hello.

Maybe that's why it was the second memory that chose to resurface now in her mind as she leaned up toward him, all the sensation gone from her arm all the way through her chest, the numbness bleeding down through her stomach. It was because she longed for hello and would have to settle for goodbye.

Inuyasha knew exactly what she was doing. And while he hated the fact that it reeked of goodbye, he bowed without hesitation toward her parting lips and did exactly what she wanted. He kissed her.

His lips fell on hers with the same intensity he attacked everything else with when things weren't going his way. He pulled her closer until he _couldn't_ pull her any closer. Maybe he could hold her here by sheer force. She released a panicked shuddering breath against his lips as the feeling vanished from her other hand and she felt it begin to slip through his chest, but he moved his lips roughly against hers and still wouldn't let go. The next time she drew a breath and the warm air passed between their lips, she found she could no longer feel the air on her tongue. And when he pressed in to close the hairline gap she'd created between them his lips passed through hers.

She pulled back an inch, staring up at him with sad half-lidded eyes.

He brought his hand up to her cheek and it fell hopelessly through her head. This couldn't be happening. _Not yet_, was all he could think. _Not yet._

Her lips moved like she was saying something but whatever she said he couldn't hear it. The rays of sunlight streaming between the leaves above them were visible through her body now. Soundlessly, her lips moved again and she stretched her arm up toward him but now he couldn't even see it, and as he sucked in a breath to shout something after her (_anything) _in the hopes she would hear it, a light so violently vibrant he had to turn his head away erupted from her.

Then, nothing. As it had been a thousand times before, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, first Kagome was there and then she was gone. Like a trick of the light; nothing more than a mirage. But unlike a mirage Kagome had always come back. Despite everything, she'd always come back. Yet even as he raced toward the well now in despair he knew this time was different than the times before, and instead of the lush forest alive with the overlapping cadences of bird songs and the thrum of cicadas, Inuyasha felt he was running through an arid desert.

He reached the Bone Eater's Well in moments, but his feet hit rough dirt and fossilized skeletal remains instead of dipping into the cold electrifying bath that led on, first through darkness then to light; to Kagome.

The way was closed. For him the well shimmered still in the distance, warped by the heat, nothing more than the delusion of a dying man under the unforgiving sun. He would never reach it.

But, like any dying man in a desert, he would keep walking toward it.


	4. Weep not

.

.

_Weep not, love, not yet, for we_

_may dive a thousand seasons deep_

_and meet fresh neath familiar leaves_

_again in the shade of the sacred tree._

.

.

(Weep not)

.

.

Cool, grainy dirt came up to meet her hands and knees as she fell. For a long moment she stared at her knuckles clenched tight on the sand. She dared not look up for fear of what she knew she would see.

"Inu_yasha_!" she screamed with sudden gusto, rending through the lonesome silence. Her voice cracked dangerously and pain shot through her vocal chords. She tried to scream it again and only a rasp came out. Scrambling to her feet, she saw with a pang of dread the expected wooden walls of the well, and when she craned her head up there it was: the distant roof of the interior of the Higurashi Shrine. She was home.

For just how long she'd been gone this time was beyond her ability to guess because time hadn't existed in the regular sense for them when they were inside the jewel. But she had a nasty suspicion that it'd been far, far longer than she'd ever been away before. When they'd woken under the tree there'd been moss grown over Tetsaiga, _roots_ over Inuyasha's ankles... and when she began to climb the vines lining the side of the well in earnest she noticed with a shock that her hair fell all the way past her waist. She'd never grown it that long in all her life.

But still, even though it was beginning to dawn on her what her family might have been going through, she let go halfway up and twisted as she fell, braced for that familiar magical tingle... And was instead jarred to her knees as she hit the dirt again. The roof of her shrine was still overhead.

She rasped loudly, wordlessly, banging her fists on the ground and squeaking in her vain attempt to scream after him five hundred years into the past. If she knew him at all then he was here on his side too, trying to get through. Salty tears fell freely and formed into microscopic pools of mud as she dug and dug and willed her hands to break through to the other side. He was so close she felt she could throw up from the sheer injustice of it. _I'm here_, she wanted to say to him, _I'm here_. But she was five hundred years too late. The magic that had allowed her to cheat time and pass through was gone, and Inuyasha and all of her dearest friends had been dead for a dozen generations.

It was Sota who found her, because their mother and grandfather shook their heads sadly and knowingly when he insisted he had heard something out by the shrine and turned their attention back to the soapy dishes in the sink. Sota was always 'hearing things' out by the shrine. They thought it was his way of coping with.. Well you know. They didn't like to talk about it.

Even though he was in junior high and was supposed to have grown out of it, Sota was still only eighty percent sure it wasn't haunted (maybe seventy percent now that Kagome had disappeared) so when he crept alone through the door into the dark he went slowly, listening. What he heard was a very strange sound. Almost like...

"Hello?" he ventured. "Anyone in here?"

Kagome quieted and hastily wiped at her tear stained face. She must look a disaster. She restarted the climb up; it was pointless to stay. Who was that calling up there? The voice was unfamiliar. Her family can't have.. have _moved_, can they? Just how long had she...

She froze as she peaked over the rim of the well and saw him standing there.

All the color drained from his face. _Okay_, he thought, _so the shrine _is_ haunted_. _By the ghost of my long lost sister._

Kagome's body at last went into actual physical shock. After all the traumatic things that had happened to her, it was the sight of her younger brother a foot and a half taller, years older, that finally did her in. She slipped from the vines and fell, sprained her ankle, and had to be carried out on Sota's back once he'd come to his senses and realized that she wasn't a ghost and this wasn't a horror movie, nor a dream. He tripped twice in his frantic run back to the house, screaming for his mother and grandfather to "Come here! Come quick, it's Kagome! It's Kagome! It's _Kagome!"_

It was an emotional day for everyone in the Higurashi household.

When she limped into her bedroom later that night it was virtually unchanged from the last time she'd seen it. The bed was still unkempt, papers still strewn across her desk... _Three years ago_, she told herself numbly. Her family had said it a hundred times since she'd come back. Three whole years. She could believe it but she couldn't feel the gravity of what three years meant. Not yet. It would take awhile.

That night sleep evaded her. After her family had exhausted all their questions and passed out she still couldn't sleep. Her bed felt strange and unfamiliar. Before she knew it she had slipped barefoot out the side door and found herself standing underneath the looming tree.

Her mother once told her that whenever she had a life-altering decision to make and was unsure which path to take, she should flip a coin.

_Flip a coin? _Kagome had repeated, barely sure she had heard her right_. How could I flip a coin for something so important? Are you crazy?_

Her mother's sage reply was, _when you're really undecided you flip a coin because as soon as the coin goes up in the air, if you find yourself hoping it lands on tails, well then.. your heart has decided for you._

That logic was indisputable and Kagome had been speechless.

But she'd never needed to employ that bit of advice and had never gotten to test the theory before. Now as she rested her head against the smooth bark of the tree and looked up at the sparse handful of stars visible through the light pollution of modern day Tokyo she realized her mother had been heart-wrenchingly right. Kagome may have fretted before over the _possibility_ of having to choose between her two lives, the two worlds she'd been allowed to inhabit, but she never fully decided which she would choose if she was eventually forced to. Instead she tried to convince herself that somehow she wouldn't _have_ to choose.

Then, the coin had gone up in the air. The light of the departing jewel had begun to swallow her and she knew with sudden cold unwavering certainty what she would choose. It didn't mean she didn't love her family, or the friends she grew up with, or the many wonders of the modern era. It was a decision that went beyond that. It wasn't even a decision, really. It was like a fact she'd known all along and it only took the flip of the coin to unearth it. She chose him. Them. The feudal era. Home.

Unfortunately for her the coin had landed heads instead of tails.

She curled in on herself and traced patterns in the cold silky dirt with her finger, and wondered how many years it had been since Inuyasha last sat under this tree. Since he had died.

It was here her mother found her in the morning, arms wrapped around her legs at the base of the tree, fast asleep.

Over the course of the next few weeks Kagome gradually began to grasp exactly what it meant to have been missing for three long years. The first thing she expected was to receive panicked phone calls from her friends. When the first week passed by without any calls she began to wonder.

"Kagome..." her mother began tenderly, and sat beside her on the couch. "Your friends have gone off to different colleges. They might not have even seen the news."

Yes, she had made the news unfortunately. After she'd been gone for more than a month and the school started asking questions, her family had no choice but to report her missing to police. Kagome had been classified a missing person in Japan until a couple days ago. And everyone wanted to know what happened to her, so she told them the only thing she could think of that wouldn't garner more inquiry.

"I ran away." That had shut up the reporters who were banging down their door. "I ran away and now I'm back, end of story. Print that," she added with venom and slammed the door in their faces.

Now she twiddled her fingers and wondered whether that had been the best thing. What would her friends think of her? Should she call them?

Those questions were answered when Yuka called up out of the blue and began the brief conversation with, "How could you do that to us?" Kagome said nothing, and Yuka went on. "We searched for you _forever_, I hope you know that. What a messed up thing to do to your family and friends! We all cared about you... we thought you were dead. What's _wrong_ with you? Ayumi's been crying nonstop since we saw the news. Don't you dare call her, Kagome. I'll tell Eri but I wouldn't expect her to call you either, not after she knows why you disappeared. You're despicable. Maybe I'll forgive you eventually but it won't be for a long, long time."

Then she'd hung up, before Kagome could even get a word in edgewise.

The following week she spent the days walking aimlessly through the city.

She couldn't bear staying home and feeling sorry for herself any longer. Staying in one place for more than a few days felt like dangerous stagnation. She should be going somewhere, anywhere, moving toward a goal... Yet she had no goal. The one thing she truly wanted was to get back to the Feudal Era but the way had been closed forever. Kagome sighed and kicked at a loose rock. The sensation of restlessness was only left over from the long hunt for the scattered shards of the jewel. She knew that. The way Inuyasha would always light a fire under them with his boundless determination whenever they stayed put too long, the way he woke them early with his unfaltering eagerness to be back on the road. Would she ever be able to stay in one place again without feeling the urge to move on?

The misshapen rock she was kicking around hit a crack in the sidewalk and lurched itself through someone's fence. It faltered and stilled beyond her reach, under a birdbath ten feet from the wrought-iron gate. She knew she wouldn't go after it but something in her urged her to anyway. Somewhere along the line that inner voice that urged her inward had begun to sound like his. Blunt, harsh, decisive. Honest. _Go get the stupid rock, Kagome._

Turning her back on the fence, she crossed the street between sprays of mist from cars and bicycles as they slid past on the slick wet street, catching infinitesimal reflections of the streetlights in the upward raining flecks of gutter water. But she glanced over her shoulder through the thin mist at that black fence and felt thwarted, cheated, even in this.

_Well then go after it, idiot. _

_Sit, boy. One can't go running after things she can't reach. _

After a few days of mindless meandering she found herself on the field of what would have been her high school. The grass and bleachers were bare. It was a Saturday. The empty bleachers screamed at her: _your family would have sat here when you graduated._ She wondered what colleges her friends went off to after they walked across the stage and got their diplomas without her, all while she fought for her soul within the jewel.

She didn't come back to the school after that. It was funny; she'd always spent so much time convincing herself and her Feudal Era friends that her schooling was as important as everything else they did there. All that studying, all that time wasted coming back for exams. Even her entrance exam! Yet now the grief she felt for the loss of her education wasn't even a fraction of what she felt for everything else. It was utterly dwarfed. Once again, she hadn't a clue what she'd wanted until after the coin was tossed.

The first person to visit her came almost two weeks after her return, and it wasn't any of her three old best friends.

"Tell him I'm not home," she snapped at Sota when he informed her who was at the door.

"Come on, sis, just go say hi..." Sota complained. "He was really heartbroken when you disappeared, ya know."

Kagome was _not_ in the mood to cater to an admirer or to make up excuses. "Don't you hate me too?" she shouted through the closed front door.

"I don't hate you Kagome," he said, surprised. His voice had deepened too, just like Sota's. After a minute she finally swung the door open but he was gone and there was a daisy on the doormat.

It was only through sheer boredom that she picked up her studies again over the next few months. It was far too late for high school, or college for that matter, not that it even mattered to her anymore. That ship had sailed. But the restlessness and the lack of a solid goal were getting to her. She was wallowing too much. Sleeping under the tree more than she slept in her own bed, sometimes even pulling a blanket and pillow down with her and sleeping at the bottom of the well. She was haunted perpetually by the fear that the magic would briefly reopen the bridge and she would miss it because she wasn't there.

Nightmares plagued her whenever she slept in her own room that the well opened and resealed itself as she lay sleeping.

But it helped to immerse herself wholly in studying. It was medicinal, in a way, in that it numbed her pain. When she was filling her head with endless math problems she couldn't think about anything else. It helped.

What _didn't_ help was that Hojo kept on coming back.

She never answered the door. It was clear the way he kept leaving flowers that he didn't hate her, but she just couldn't stand the thought of seeing him. She'd have to lie to him too about what happened and she was so tired of lying, and besides that, the thought of trying to deflect his romantic affections made her feel ill. The word romance made her feel ill. She was trying not to bring her family down with the weight of the depression she felt and was trying very hard to keep a positive outlook but it didn't change what she felt.

Kagome was young but she wasn't a child. She knew she would never love again.

It wasn't until almost a year after her return to the bottom of the well that she finally gave in. It was more curiosity than anything else. "What do you want from me, anyway?" she called out her bedroom window as he retreated away from the Higurashi house.

He turned abruptly and his face lit up as he made his way briskly to the side of the house. "Hi, Kagome!"

"Why do you even bother?" she went on, unphased by his demeanor. "Everyone else hates me for leaving for three years. How are you any different?"

Hojo scratched his cheek ponderously as he looked up from the ground. "I thought you probably had your reasons..." he said slowly. "And now that you're back, I've just wanted to see you, that's all." His smile faded, and she could tell how her ignoring him had hurt. "I've been wanting to ask whether you'd like do something with me."

Kagome's grip on the windowsill tightened and she suddenly found she didn't have the kindness to patiently deflect him like she once did. She brought her knees up to the windowsill and despite his shout of alarm she jumped, landing heavily beside him. He stepped backwards in shock and she jabbed a finger to his chest. "Look, Hojo, you've always been so nice to me and I never wanted to break your heart, but things have _changed_. I can't lead you on any longer. There was never a chance for us. I'm really sorry but you have to stop asking me out on dates because it will _never_ happen, Kog—!" She slapped her hand over her mouth. Where had _that_ come from? "Oh. Oh no... Hojo, I'm sorry. That was harsher than I meant to sound..." Here she was yelling at Koga, when it was Hojo standing before her. She was losing her mind.

As she panted and composed herself for a better apology she wished she could undo her outburst. That is, until he spoke. "Kagome, I wasn't asking you out on a date."

Her hands drooped from her face.

"I uh, I actually have a girlfriend. We've been dating about a year now."

Kagome felt her cheeks heating up at record speed. "Then why do you keep coming here!"

"Well—because," he spluttered, putting his hand to his chest like she'd wounded him. "You're my friend. I thought you might want someone to talk to, if anything... I heard from Ayumi what Yuka said to you."

"Oh, so you did?" Kagome said icily. She was still bitter about it.

"Yes, and I thought it was cruel of her," Hojo said. "I know you, and I know you wouldn't leave us all on purpose like that without an explanation unless there was a very good reason."

Kagome knew he was being nicer than she deserved, but she just couldn't take it. "You _don't_ know me, Hojo!" She surprised herself by the anger in her tone. "You think you do but you don't really know anything about me! Nobody does. Nobody knows."

The sad truth was that nobody here knew her, not even her own family. The people with whom she'd shared all her most intimate moments and all her most life-changing events were all _dead_. Everything that had made her the person she was today had happened in the Feudal Era. She choked back a sob and immediately became mad at herself; she hadn't let herself cry in months.

"I didn't run away, okay?" she snapped harshly. "It was just another lie to cover up the truth. And I was never sick back in junior high. Those were _all_ just coverups. See? You think you do but you don't know _anything_ about me."

Hojo blinked at her and his mouth fell open. "Wow, um.. That's a lot to..."

"If you'd like to go about hating me now that's fine," she said coldly. She was already regretting what she said, but, "I just can't lie anymore. Especially not to the only friend I have left." Though she highly doubted she had him as a friend after the news she'd just laid on him.

"Kagome..."

She had to turn away from the gentleness in his tone. She'd expected anger. Hate, even. But she forgot this was _Hojo_. There was no ferocity about him, no unmuteable passion. No wonder she'd never quite been able to fall for him when Inuyasha would always come back and assure her in so many words that _he_ wanted her.

"Would you like to explain to me what you're talking about?"

She almost said no, but then she realized he hadn't demanded she explain it to him like Inuyasha would have. He'd asked if she would _like_ to. And, well... _yes_. She very much _did_ want to pour her miserable heart onto someone's shoulder like she sometimes used to do to Sango when Inuyasha went running after Kikyo's soul collectors. More than anything she yearned for someone who could understand her that way again, someone who could _know_ her. Someone who could listen.

And here was Hojo, looking down at her with concerned eyes, telling her he would listen.

"Yeah," she whispered. "Yeah, I think I would."

So instead of sending him away like she had so many times before, she took him by the arm, led him to the shrine, and for the first time in her life she told her story from the very beginning.

At first Hojo couldn't believe what he was hearing. But when she brought him to the sacred tree and described Inuyasha as he laid in a cursed sleep, she spoke in a hushed voice so raw with emotion that it was the last time he internally questioned her veracity. When she got to the part about the jewel emerging from her body she lifted her shirt and showed him the scar. They sat against the house under her window and she told him the whole thing. Everything. _Everything_. She showed him which scars went with which battle and his face paled but he kept quiet. Kagome knew she was telling him too much but he still hadn't run away and called her crazy so she just kept going... Even the embarrassing parts, even the heartbreaking parts, it all spilled out of her piece by piece. By the time the sky had begun the transition from navy to purple, letting them know the sun was coming up and they'd been sitting there for over seven hours, Kagome was leading him back to the tree to show him where she slept for three long years.

Once her story was finally over the fire went out of her and she realized Hojo had scarcely spoken since he asked her to tell him. She stole a glance at him as they walked back toward her house and had the fleeting urge to ask if he believed her; then she decided she'd rather not know.

"That felt... good," she admitted. Her voice was hoarse from crying.

Hojo simply nodded, and stayed on the bottom step as she climbed them toward the front door. There was a dazed look about him. "Thank you," he said quietly. "I could tell that was hard."

"Yes."

"You should sleep," he said kindly, but went on with a scolding look, "But don't sleep under that tree or at the bottom of the well.. Okay?"

She laughed. "Yeah.. Okay." It was a genuine laugh and it mended something small inside her.

"Can I come see you next week after class sometime?"

She was kind of surprised that he ever wanted to see her again, but hey. It felt nice to finally have a friend again.

For that one night, at least, she slept soundly in her own bed.

It was also Hojo that gave something meaningful to her for the first time since she'd gotten back home. One day weeks later he showed up with a mischievous smile on his face and wouldn't tell her where he was taking her until they showed up thirty minutes later on his university campus. It wasn't until he thrust a bow into her hands in front of twenty confused onlookers by the shed on the field behind the towering gymnasium that she realized where he'd brought her.

"_She's_ a master archer?" the tallest of the guys muttered to the girl leaning against him. "Puh-lease."

Kagome pushed Hojo aside when he opened his mouth to protest. Finally, something she could _do_. "You're damn right." She could shoot a target a half-mile away while moving eighty kilometers per hour. "Turn around and put your hands up on the wall," she said. "I'll show you."

He snickered but did what she said, flashing a disbelieving look at the other members of the archery club. Then, she turned around and marched away to the other end of the field.

The boy with his hands pressed to the wall wondered aloud to Hojo, "Where's she going? She give up? I wonder what she's - _holy shit!" _

An arrow had lodged itself into the wood of the shed between his index and middle fingers, and scarcely a second after that another struck true between his middle and ring fingers. He withdrew his hand with a yelp and screamed bloody murder at her across the field, but the damage had been done. Everyone was in awe and Kagome Higurashi, who wasn't even a student there, was suddenly a campus legend.

It wasn't much but it did do something very important for her. When she returned smugly to their end of the field and half of the club clamored for her to give them private lessons she realized she could use the skills she learned in the Feudal Era in this era as well.

So in the end it seemed only natural to begin studying to become an actual priestess. After all, she'd always intended to study under Kaede after the search for the jewel shards was over. The idea gave her something to strive for, and that was more than she'd had in a long time. The only thing she'd strived for until now was something she could probably never accomplish, and it was going to be the death of her if she didn't put her effort into something other than trying to figure out a way back to then. So, she threw herself into becoming a priestess with everything she had. Her grandpa cried happy tears of disbelief when she told him.

The hardest part about the undertaking though was the studying of history.

She found as she opened a history book for the first in time in years that she was suddenly dreading it more than anything she'd dreaded in a long time. The first page crinkled under her fingers as she read over the table of contents. Would she find Kikyo under the list of famous priestesses? Kaede? Would she read about her own life when she read about the history of the Shikon Jewel? Would she have to read about how it was shattered and restored?

What she _did_ find over the course of her studies was something she never could have expected.

Deep into the histories, where fact was smudged with legend and no respectable historian considered it 'history,' Kagome ran aground on the story she was looking for. The story of a powerful priestess who guarded the jewel until a half-demon stole it, who managed to pin the thief to a tree with a sacred arrow before dying and taking the jewel with her. The half-demon was inadvertently awoken fifty years later by the priestess's reincarnation and in their ensuing battle they shattered the Shikon Jewel.

Kagome, filled with emotion, turned the page so hard it tore. But the next chapter moved on to the next topic. She searched. She read everything, turned over every stone, pursued every legend.

That was it. That was all there was to the story. The legendary jewel hadn't been seen since.

_But how?_

The question bothered her for years and years.

How had history remembered the beginning of the story and not the rest of it? Had any of it even _happened? _The question gnawed at her day after day, every day until she was sure she'd go mad because of it. _Why_ had almost none of her actions in the past affected the future? It wasn't until twenty years after she awoke from her three year sleep that she would get an answer which satisfied her.

"Yuta, this is Kagome, the friend I've telling you about."

Kagome shifted uncomfortably as she sat in the chair opposite the man's desk. In his ten years as a professor here Hojo had never yet ventured to introduced her to a colleague, and so Kagome had to wonder just what Hojo had been 'telling him' about her. She shot him a glare which he ignored.

"Ah," Yuta said, drawing it out, adjusting his glasses eagerly as he leaned across the desk, dunking his tie in his coffee without noticing. "Ah. So I meet her at last. The time traveling priestess!"

_"Hojo!"_ she seethed, and reached toward the other chair where he sat looking quite guilty and whacked him hard on the shoulder.

"Ow!"

"Don't blame him," Yuta went on, "I've kept it secret, I promise, and anyway I've been begging him to introduce us for months."

"But _why_," she hissed through her teeth, still glaring daggers at Hojo, who'd grossly betrayed her trust.

"He's a theoretical physicist..." Hojo said weakly, hoping she would get it. "With an interest in time travel."

"And a terrible weakness for legends and myths!" Yuta added with glee.

"My life isn't a myth," Kagome said hotly while Yuta squeezed the liquid out of his tie onto his desk.

"Yes, precisely," Yuta exclaimed, "which is why it's so fascinating!"

"I don't know what you could possibly mean by that."

"Kagome," Hojo began, and cringed into his chair when she turned her glare back on him. "Yuma and I have been talking about, you know, the discrepancies in your story..."

"You can say it," Kagome said, crossing her arms. "You mean how according to the legends, almost nothing I ever did in the Feudal Era happened."

"Yes!" Yuta interjected, "That's exactly what we've been talking about. Please don't go," he added, finally injecting some compassion into his voice when Kagome rose from her chair and grabbed her bag. "It's just that I've been studying the possibility of time travel and the paradoxes thereof for most of my life, and well, I'd like to understand what happened."

"You mean you do believe me?" she said slowly.

"Oh, well, yes. Of course. I mean, why wouldn't I? Hojo certainly hasn't proven to be insane yet, and you seem fairly levelheaded yourself. I simply have a student's curiosity. I think we can help one another. Please, sit. I'd really like to hear what you have to offer and to offer my help in return."

So Kagome sat, reluctantly, and opened her heart for the second time since returning.

She glossed over the details this time around, and by the time she got to the end of her story an hour later Yuta's tie was once again soaked in coffee from how far he'd been leaning over the desk.

"I've been nursing a theory," he said excitedly once she'd finished, "and after hearing your story firsthand I've only come to deepen my belief in it. His eyes twinkled behind his glasses. As he looked at her and paused for dramatic effect she could almost believe he was some reincarnation of the flea Myoga. He was certainly as tactless. "Would you like to hear it?"

_Spit it out, _that gruff inner voice that wasn't quite hers seemed to say,_ we don't have all freaking day._

Kagome didn't know then that when she said "Yes" that it would be a pivotal moment in her life.

She often wondered in her later years whether she would go back and say no to Yuta if given the option. She began to wonder so often that, for the fun of it, she flipped a coin. Her heart decided no. She wouldn't go back and unhear Yuta's theory. It was a constant source of anguish, but somehow it was also her source of hope.

It freed her to leave home and strike out into the world because she no longer believed there was any chance of seeing Inuyasha again. She'd always held onto some scrap of hope that he'd survived into the modern era and she'd meet him somewhere again, but not after hearing Yuta's indisputable theory.

_Now I'm no expert in magic or any of that stuff... That's your alley. I'm a fan of the stories but mostly I'm a scientist._ _This is a mystery, and the scientist inside me is a solver of mysteries._

Kagome backpacked around Japan on foot through her forties, revisiting every place she'd ever been in the feudal past. Every forest that still stood, every mountain, every river she could still find. There wasn't any specific reason for it. She just did. She didn't have a career. She didn't make much money. But then, she didn't care much about money. It was simply nice to travel, and she felt more at peace when she slept under the stars. Sometimes when she woke and she was still half asleep she almost thought she heard people conversing over the sound of her crackling dying fire, but when she looked they were never there. Even after all these years she couldn't forget them.

_You said it was the magic of the jewel that allowed you to travel to the past. Now what then, I ask, was the power that allowed Inuyasha to travel to the future when no one else from the past was able to?_

When she became too old to backpack aimlessly like she had as a child, she settled into the house her mother had left to her in her will. She supposed it had always been in the cards for her. No matter what she always seemed to end up back here under the sacred tree. Every day she checked the well, just as she used to, though she no longer expected it would open. The way had been closed for almost forty years.

She had students now. A couple young girls whom she instructed in the ways of the priesthood. In the mirror one day she was studying the lines on her face and wasn't sad to realize she was coming to resemble Kaede.

Kaede told her something important once when Kagome asked why Inuyasha was able to get through the well when no one else was. She'd been so bitter at first when he kept coming to drag her away early from her studies, and went searching for answers.

_Child, there is hardly anything as powerful as the jewel which brought ye here to us from so far in the future._

_Yeah, but Inuyasha doesn't _have_ the jewel. How come _he_ can get through?_

_I wasn't finished, _Kaede had continued dispassionately_. I was going to say that when we see such great power exerted, power such as that of the Shikon Jewel, we are often blind to smaller miracles. Sometimes what seems a small amount of magic can surprise ye with the length of it's reach._

Kagome had understood then that Kaede meant it was the spell on Inuyasha's necklace, the spell which bound him to her, that allowed him to pass through the well into modern Tokyo. But the true weight of Kaede's words didn't settle on Kagome's heart until that day in Yuta's office so long ago.

_It's that necklace! You said yourself that it bound him to you. Think about it for a minute, Kagome. When you traveled back and forth between that era and this, the same amount of time had always passed. When you stayed here for three days, three days had passed there. When you stayed there for three years, three years had passed here. Do you see?_

But she hadn't seen, not at first. Even now as she grew into an old woman it still didn't feel quite real. Sometimes when a breeze blew threw her open window and she heard the leaves rustling outside it still felt as if she'd see a figure in red perched on her windowsill when she turned to look. It was difficult to believe what she knew to be true.

_So if you've been here for twenty years... then for the people you knew in the past, it's only been twenty years as well. I know it sounds farfetched, Kagome, but hear me out. The legends - they all tell the story as you know it. _

_That is, up until the point where the necklace attaches Inuyasha to you._

Kagome spent her declining years content to watch over the shrine as her family had done for centuries. She had long since forgiven fate for handing her a tainted lot. She was happy with the life she'd led. It hadn't been an orthodox one, but she'd seen the world and she had loved and she was satisfied.

Yet sometimes, still, when the hour was late she would slip out barefoot into the dark and rest beneath the tree, wondering if he was doing so in his own timeline. Time itself had lost most of its meaning to her, ever since it had truly _clicked_ that time ran parallel for her and Inuyasha. She was fifty-seven years older, and it may logically be hundreds of years since he'd sat under this tree, but he wasn't dead and gone yet because in _reality_ it had only been fifty-seven years for him too.

Yes, it was difficult to grasp. Impossible, even. But she'd learned on the day she fell through the well and every day thereafter that not everything in this strange world made sense.

_The jewel might be the ship that sailed you there and back but the beads have always been the bridge between the two eras. As soon as the two of you were linked you locked the two times together. After you put the necklace on him the legend stops because you attached their time to ours... Kagome, all that stuff _did_ happen, but their timeline simply hasn't caught up to ours yet. It can't. _

_It's like... Look. It's like two waves, five hundred miles apart, which are traveling the same direction through the ocean. The one following the other can never catch up. Not until the leading wave crashes on the shore._

_What you mean to say, _Kagome had replied slowly, _is that none of that stuff has happened in our past... because only twenty years has passed for them in the Feudal Era since it happened? _Her brain was aching but she was beginning to understand the complicated map of timelines that this physicist was attempting to draw for her.

_Yes, exactly! Exactly. They won't catch up to us for hundreds more years... or, until the spell that binds you and Inuyasha breaks. That, I'm afraid, will come first._

_I see. You mean when I die._

It seemed almost like divine justice that in the end it was herself who had ensured she would never see Inuyasha again. If it was the rosary she had activated with that one word so long ago that kept their timelines moving parallel to each other, then it was her own fault for never freeing him of it. Maybe if she had done so she would have gotten to see him again before she died. Maybe he _would_ survive five hundred years into the future and say her name one more time. But, sixty years had passed for her and that meant only sixty years had passed for him as well. One wave could never catch the other until the first crashed upon the shore. How ironic that Inuyasha's timeline would catch up to hers the moment she died_._

Tonight was a new moon.

In her old age she didn't think of him nearly as much as she once had, but it was these nights that she thought of him most. She couldn't help but wonder if he was safe. If he was happy. If in his human state with purely human emotions he thought of her more often.

These nights she always spent underneath the sacred tree, though her bones were old and her joints protested and gave her hell for sleeping on the cold ground as if she were still a spry sapling. The sky was clear tonight and she had as healthy a view of the stars as one ever did in Tokyo. She was not bitter, no. Not anymore. Time was relative and could not be set in stone. She knew that now.

And when she closed her eyes to sleep that night she was thinking that it was quite alright that she never got to see him. Perhaps in the next life. Yes... That sounded right.

_Meet me here then_, she thought, and closed her eyes to the glittering sky.

Kagome's tired physical heart was now far weaker than her metaphysical one, and when her eyes fluttered shut that night they never opened again. But she was right. The intricate dance of time did not only step in one direction. All was relative, and at the moment Kagome died, exactly five hundred years in the past someone ran his fingers in traumatic disbelief over the useless beads as he felt the power bleed from the necklace he'd worn for almost sixty-six years.

Inuyasha knew then with a certainty that ran him through like a poisoned blade that Kagome was dead. But time was a dance he knew the lonely steps to. He kept the lifeless necklace on because he and Kagome _would_ meet again.


	5. Wait not

.

.

_Wait not, love, wait not for me._

_I'll lie with you in timeless sleep_

_where oft we've lied neath timeless leaves _

_in the timeless shade of the sacred tree;_

.

.

(Wait not)

.

.

The intensity of the vibrations that pulsed through the beads nearly floored him. If they had he would have welcomed it—but they didn't. The heavy pulses drained away into the crisp night air and left behind a suffocating absence.

No one else in the room had felt anything. But as Inuyasha closed a trembling hand around the rosary he'd worn as long as they'd known him they fell instantly quiet, sensing in the way only life-long friends can that something had just gone very, very wrong.

To him he might as well have been alone. He might as well have been the only person within a hundred miles. And while he could almost go his whole life without testing what had just happened, he didn't wait even a full two seconds before trying. It was with a morbid determination that he closed his other hand around the beads and drew the necklace slowly over his head, in much the same way someone slides a noose the other direction. There was an audible gasp from the others in the room as it slipped off his head without any trouble at all. As if it was an ordinary piece of jewelry and had never been anything more.

Inuyasha didn't hear them gasp. He still didn't hear as they called after him when he pushed his way out of the hut and into the night with the lifeless beads still clutched in his hands.

"What does it mean?" Shippo wondered, staring out the door with scarcely guarded worry at Inuyasha's fast disappearing back.

"I - I don't know," was Miroku's faint reply. He shifted restlessly on the bed, rubbing at the white bristles on his chin. "You should go after him, Shippo."

"I think I've known Inuyasha long enough to know when he wants to be alone," Shippo barked, to Miroku's strained laughter. Miroku turned his worry on the open door where the darkest night of the month loomed over the countryside. Shippo joked, but it was true. No one would find him if he didn't want to be found. Even if he was human for the night.

Inuyasha stalked so far and so blindly for so many hours that when he finally came to his senses he had no idea where he was. He'd come to the bank of an unfamiliar stream. The icy water gurgled past his ankles and splashed at him when the beads dropped from his hand.

What did it mean? The rosary had been stuck fast around his sorry neck since the day Kagome woke him. Even after she'd gone for good he'd never been able to remove it. So what did this _mean? _He sat on the bank and left his legs in the cold water. His weak human legs were beginning to numb but he hardly cared.

Yeah, he could guess at the reason why. He wasn't an idiot. Hell, he was more than a hundred goddamn years old now. But humans - they never lived longer than sixty, seventy, eighty years if they were lucky, ninety if they struck some kind of deal with the devil. And it had been sixty whole years since Kagome left. She'd been so young when she first came through the well and it had been sixty years since then, which meant she could already be...

No, it didn't make sense. Kagome wouldn't even be _born_ for another four hundred years.

And yet the beads tugged at his heart insistently as they shifted in the current on the rocky riverbed, nudging against his foot. He retrieved them, chastened by the thought of them being swept away downstream.

He'd no way to test it but he'd already accepted it as the truth anyway. Why else would they suddenly have stopped working?

After all, he could recall very clearly what Kaede had said long ago, in the early days after the jewel had been broken. The beads would not be removed from his neck until Kagome herself removed them - unless one of them was to die. So when Kagome vanished he figured they'd never be coming off. And now as he clutched them helplessly in his hand he could come to only one conclusion. Kagome was dead. She died tonight, sixty years after leaving him...

The silence of the surrounding forest was suffocating.

He'd always found consolation in the fact that Kagome wouldn't be born for hundreds of years. At least while he had had to go on without her, she wouldn't be living without him, if only because she didn't even exist yet. It was a selfish way to comfort himself but it made him feel better. But now as the freezing water numbed his legs he considered a different story. A Kagome who went home and went on living—after all, didn't time always move forward in her era just the same as it did here when she was gone? A Kagome who went home and grew up and grew old and died.

He did something then he'd only ever done three times—once when he thought his friends had all died in a fire, once when Kikyo died for the second time, and once on the day Kagome left him for good. Maybe it was because he was human tonight, with those stupid acute human feelings. Maybe it was the stupid moon's fault. Maybe it was more than that.

No, it was. It was more than that. Because instead of simply tearing up, instead of swallowing the lump in his throat and manning up like the other times, Inuyasha cried.

When he stopped the pink lining on the eastern mountains that preceded dawn was already growing wider. The beads had left thick grooves in his palms from how tightly he'd clutched them during the night, and the sharper beads had cut into his skin. When he stood he placed them back in the spot they'd occupied for most of his life, and he didn't know it at that moment, but it would be the last time he ever cried.

Kagome might have lived and died, but the two of them had cheated time on plenty occasions before and he knew with a stone cold conviction that he would meet her again.

But it would be four hundred more years before that hour would come.

.

.

It had been so long that at first he wasn't sure it was the right decade yet. He'd been watching the Higurashi line inheriting the shrine for generation after generation, but he wasn't yet positive if this was Kagome's mother or not. Compared to the woman in his faint memory this woman was so young, and he'd never actually bothered to learn her mother's name. She had always been 'mom.' But one summer when he returned to Japan to check in on the family like he always did at the tail end of the season, he was met with a heart-wrenching surprise.

_A baby._

A baby the mother was calling Kagome.

He waited until it was dark and the family had long since gone to sleep before he slid open the window of the nursery and crept across the room. The bundle under the pink blanket moved restlessly and she whimpered softly in her sleep. She whined louder and he reached toward her, transfixed. Instantly she quieted as his fingers brushed along her head. A warm wind blew its way through him then and stirred something that had fossilized hundreds of years ago in the sands of his soul. It rose within him and the dust began to fall. Layer by layer. By the time the baby had opened her eyes he'd already fled the room.

But after that day he was never far.

Patience was a virtue the years had finally forced into him. Waiting for her to grow up was not nearly as bad as it had been waiting for her to be born. He was careful never to let her see him—after all, he wouldn't dare run the risk of altering anything that had already happened. But he waited, and watched. He watched her crawl on all fours and then toddle around on weak tiny legs and then run on ganglier legs. There was something looming on the horizon. Finally, he was taking the last couple steps toward the elusive mirage.

She'd been fifteen for quite awhile when he began to grow antsy. Shouldn't she have fallen through the well by now? It grew so late in the year that he began to worry that she would never fall through at all. She would never meet him.

Well, screw that bullshit. He'd waited five hundred years to see her again and he was through waiting. Screw the possibility of messing up the timeline. He was sick of waiting and not intervening.

He was sitting up in the branches of the tree one night dwelling on this when the reveleation came to him.

He remembered. It was that stupid cat! That was _it!_

The next day when the family was all out, Inuyasha crept into the house and found the fat lazy cat lounging by the couch.

"Buyo..."

The cat yowled at him warily but didn't have time to dodge before he'd been scooped up.

Later that day as he hid in the tree holding a very irritated cat, he heard Sota's familiar voice from far below, begging Kagome to help him look for the animal. He grinned to himself as he heard Kagome poke fun at Sota and make her way toward the shrine. He was so distracted by his triumph that Buyo managed to squirm himself away, and dropped from the tree. He fought the urge to go after Kagome when her scream filled the yard, knowing full well what evil was about to drag her five hundred years into the past, but the urge wasn't too strong. After all, he'd already saved her from the hair demon a long, long time ago.

Not long after that day he left Japan again. It was painful when she was gone for those long stretches of time in the Feudal Era. He realized he was jealous. Of what, himself? Yeah. Pretty stupid. But he couldn't help it. The waiting became awful again. This was the homestretch and it was killing him.

But he went back to Japan when he knew it was time. It was only an estimate, but he knew he'd guessed right when he saw the Higurashi family dressed all in black.

How long had it been for them since Kagome had gone missing? How long till she'd appear here again? How much longer?

_How much longer?_

One thing he wasn't prepared for was Sota seeing him. He'd never been spotted in all these years of spying, and now he had stupidly let his guard down in his excitement. Tripped up in the last mile. Fuck.

"Inuyasha?" The kid looked and sounded a little older. Inuyasha nearly fell out of the tree when he spoke from the ground. How didn't he hear him coming? "Inuyasha!" he shouted when there was no response. He could hear the deep heartbreak in the kid's tone. "Where's my sister?"

When Inuyasha dropped to the ground beside him Sota started wailing on him uselessly and shouting. _"You've been gone five months how dare you come back here without her what's happened to her why didn't you protect her you were my hero why didn't you bring her back to us what happened..."_

Inuyasha, stunned, let it happen until the mother and grandfather emerged from the house looking stricken.

"Hey calm down kid, you're gonna give yourself a heart attack," Inuyasha muttered, and grabbed Sota's flailing fists. He kneeled to Sota's level and eyed him man-to-man. "Don't worry," he added as Sota paused for breath, "I saved her. Just, you know... not... yet."

All of the family looked at him with keen interest as he said this, and he found himself being ushered inside the house under threat of bodily harm.

And so, for the first time in his long, long life, Inuyasha told his story from the very beginning. He told her family about the fight for their souls within the jewel and how they'd saved each other, Kagome disappearing, the necklace's death sixty years later; he told them how he'd left Japan and traveled the world, how even over all those years he'd still never managed to forget. He even told them how he'd temporarily kidnapped Buyo in the attempt to trigger the incident with the hair demon, to Sota's astonishment.

Over the next two and a half years he spent more time with Sota than anyone else. He assured himself it was because he was Kagome's kid brother and reminded him of her, but honestly... the kid was more like Shippo than anyone else. It was nicer than he'd admit to have someone looking up to him again.

He told Sota stories of colonial America and of living in Poland during World War II and of escaping Korea during the nineties. He told more stories than he'd ever told anyone before, and he never realized Sota wasn't asking because he _wanted_ to hear them. Sota was asking because he could tell Inuyasha needed to tell them.

Inuyasha never fully understood why the Higurashi family refused to let him leave. He thought it was a hostage kind of thing. 'You can't leave until we get Kagome back.' It wasn't until much later that he'd understand it was more a 'you belong here' kind of thing. It was more a 'family' kind of thing. (Even though he'd long since learned that families and hostages were of the same category.)

And then, one sunny do-nothing day when everyone least expected it, Kagome came back to them.

.

.

Cool, grainy dirt came up to meet her hands and knees as she fell. For a long moment she stared at her knuckles clenched tight on the sand. She dared not look up for fear of what she knew she would see.

"Inu_yasha_!" she screamed with sudden gusto, rending through the lonesome silence. Her voice cracked dangerously and pain shot through her vocal chords. She tried to scream it again and only a rasp came out. Scrambling to her feet, she saw with a pang of dread the expected wooden walls of the well, and when she craned her head up there it was: the distant roof of the interior of the Higurashi Shrine. She was home.

For just how long she'd been gone this time was beyond her ability to guess because time hadn't existed in the regular sense for them when they were inside the jewel. But she had a nasty suspicion that it'd been far, far longer than she'd ever been away before. When they'd woken under the tree there'd been moss grown over Tetsaiga, _roots_ over Inuyasha's ankles... and when she began to climb the vines lining the side of the well in earnest she noticed with a shock that her hair fell all the way past her waist. She'd never grown it that long in all her life.

But still, even though it was beginning to dawn on her what her family might have been going through, she let go halfway up and twisted as she fell, bracing for that familiar magical tingle... And instead was jarred to her knees as she hit the dirt again. The roof of her shrine was still overhead.

She rasped loudly, wordlessly, banging her fists on the ground and squeaking in her vain attempt to scream after him five hundred years into the past. If she knew him at all then he was here on his side too, trying to get through. Salty tears fell freely and formed into microscopic pools of mud as she dug and dug and willed her hands to break through to the other side. He was so close she felt she could throw up from the sheer injustice of it. _I'm here_, she wanted to say to him, _I'm here_. But she was five hundred years too late. The magic that had allowed her to cheat time and pass through was gone, and Inuyasha and all of her dearest friends had been dead for a dozen generations.

It was Sota that found her. He called out frantically from the top of the well and she hastily dried her eyes on her dusty sleeve and did her best to bury her sorrow beneath the happiness of seeing her family.

The reunion with her family was tearful... and strange.

"Don't you guys want to know why I've been gone three years?" she asked hoarsely.

She still couldn't begin to believe it had _been_ three years, not with the way they were handling her return... The three of them were overjoyed but they didn't seem the slightest bit curious! In fact they seemed almost distracted, and Sota kept glancing over at the bottom of the stairs as she talked.

"Yes, of course," her mother said after a slight hesitation. "Please tell us, Kagome."

"Sota, why do you keep looking over there?" Kagome snapped.

Instead of answering he slipped off the couch and disappeared up the staircase toward her bedroom. He didn't come back for ten minutes, and by then he'd missed her whole rundown of what had happened to her during the last three years and why she was suddenly back.

"He's being weird," Sota whispered to their mother when he retook his seat, and Kagome bristled.

"Who, the cat?" she scoffed. Why was Sota treating her as if she'd only been gone a day? But just then Buyo squeezed out from behind the couch and went trotting across the room toward the kitchen. "Sota..." she said dangerously. "Who is upstairs?"

Sota folded his arms and furrowed his eyebrows. "You'd better go catch him. I think he's got cold feet, the idiot."

"Who's..." She was already on her feet. "Sota, what do you mean? Who's here?" She was already halfway up the stairs and didn't hear her brother's answer. "Inu-" The name died on her breath when she threw her bedroom door open wide and saw the window ajar, her drapes blowing in the gentle breeze. She sprinted blindly to the window and her heart dropped out of its place in her chest as she spotted him, already to the edge of the yard and still moving.

Air filled her lungs, and with a power she didn't think she still had in her long-dormant vocal chords, the word "SIT!" echoed for miles around.

Inuyasha heard her loud and clear, and the fact that it was the first word she'd spoken to him in centuries was on its own power enough to freeze him in his tracks. It didn't matter that the spell had been broken. When he turned and saw her there at her window looking his way he couldn't have moved if he'd tried.

Kagome's mouth hung open when nothing happened. There was no familiar cry from him as he ate dirt. The man in the yard didn't fall.

Something inside her broke then. She'd been wrong. It wasn't him.

But he'd stopped. And when he turned to look at her it looked nothing like him but she knew anyway. She knew it was him. _It was him._

She was so afraid he'd disappear if she moved her eyes from him for an instant that she climbed up onto the windowsill and made to jump down instead of taking the long way through the house. "Where do you think you're going?" she started angrily, but as soon as she hit the ground and finally got a good look at him she fell silent.

He stood stock still, until a smile began to eat up his blank face. The blissful expression that broke over him was so at odds with everything else that was happening that it brought Kagome to a halt as she crossed the distance between them.

He just stared at her, like he knew exactly what she was thinking and was waiting for her to speak. Well, she didn't know where to begin!

He was wearing modern clothes and his hair was short, so so short, those ears she loved so much nowhere in sight. Not only that but he just looked _different_. There was a far off look in his eyes that had never been there before. That rough playful boyishness that had hung about him was gone. The impatience was replaced by a hard stoicism... Even as he waited for her to speak she knew something was terribly wrong. He was _older_.

She fumbled over her words as she walked toward him and still couldn't speak. In the lengthening silence her hand found its way to the rosary around his neck, the only thing still familiar about him.

...Yet it too was changed somehow. She looked from the beads to his face, and all the questions she couldn't word burned in her eyes.

"It... The spell's been broken for a long time," he admitted quietly. To illustrate this he easily lifted it over his head and held it in his hand.

Impossible!

The words 'a long time' settled between them heavily and Kagome found it suddenly hard to breathe. "How long?" she squeaked.

He looked away from her then. She hated the way he did it, hated whatever he was about to say that put that distant expression on his face.

Somehow she wasn't surprised when he finally spat it out. "Four hundred years."

"Four... hundred..."

Oh yes, he was older.

Her hand fell away numbly from the dark beads as everything clicked into place. He was so, so much older. She could barely see his eyes since he was looking resolutely at the side of the house but what she saw hurt. A tiny glimpse of half a thousand years touched her briefly and icily, and she shivered despite the short shadows and the warmth of the afternoon sun.

He still refused to look at her as he went on, "Ever since you died."

"Since I... died?" Comprehension evaded her. Here she'd been thinking so recently that he'd been dead for generations. Yet here he was, in the flesh, telling her _she_ had been the one to die! "When did I..?"

"It was sixty years and two months after you left me. That day," he added after a moment, as if she could have possibly forgotten so quickly, "underneath the tree."

She struggled to catch up, realizing what had happened twenty minutes ago for her had been five hundred years ago for him. How... _How_...

His voice was very abrupt and matter-of-fact as he continued, like he was reading it out of a script someone else had written. "It happened on the night of the new moon." He gave a bark of laughter, turning away even further. "I've often thought you pulled that shit on purpose, leaving me for good on the new moon like that when I was stuck with all those extra human emotions just so it'd hurt all the more."

"Inuyasha... I didn't.." She trailed off, unsure how to proceed. She didn't what? Didn't leave him on purpose? Didn't _die? _But.. to hear him tell it, she had died a long, long time ago.

"No, I know you didn't."

His face softened and Kagome realized with a start that he wasn't angry at all. Not anymore. What she was seeing was only the faint echo of anger and grief felt long, long ago. As she looked into his face, older and lined by the years and scars he never had when she knew him, it was as if she was seeing him for the first time again. He was only inches from her but the depth of the years that had separated them were a physical entity between them, an impassible canyon; Inuyasha was five _hundred_ years older than she. This man was a stranger to the boy she'd known.

Yet, the corners of his mouth picked up and she was gifted with an eager smile far more similar to the one she knew so well. So maybe old dogs remember old tricks too. "Or, I should say, you haven't yet. I got here first this time around... Had to take the long way though."

She couldn't help but smile when he said that (he'd sent a searing glance in the direction of the well). But her smile faded when she realized what he'd meant. She couldn't begin to imagine how many times he'd tried to use the well and failed, and realized how many years he would have to wait... She swallowed hard and moved closer, anxious to close the gap five hundred years had cut between them, but his face fell and he stepped away.

"I'll be back," he said shortly. "Soon. Talk to Sota. I'll... I'll be back."

Before she could say anything the man in front of her had vanished in a flurry of white, and she watched with disassociated curiosity as a large white dog fled down the stone staircase away from the house.

After a hundred or so heartbeats the reality of what had happened overcame her and she went back into the house to lie down, or cry, or something.

She was greeted by a whirlwind of concerned family members. Everything they said flew right over her head. She couldn't hear them over the sound of her heartache. But she gathered that they were fighting with one another about something, and it seemed Sota had won because he shoved their mother and grandfather unceremoniously from the room, with a last shout from their mother to "make sure that girl eats something because she's been fasting for three years!"

Kagome stared at the swirls on the wooden table as Sota busied himself in the fridge. She didn't know whether he was talking or not. Eventually a plate filled with an assortment of leftovers clinked on the table under her nose and she look up to see Sota eyeing her earnestly.

"You eat. I'll talk, okay?"

Kagome nodded. She didnt wanna talk anyway. It was still scary to see Sota so much older. Three years older. He sounded so much more sure of himself. She loaded a lump of rice into her mouth to drown her comments as he took the seat next to her.

"I don't know how much he told you—"

"He told me enough," she said, spewing rice.

"You eat," he reminded her, pointing at the plate. "I'll talk."

She stared sulkily at the rice and took another bite. She wouldn't admit it but it was the best rice she'd ever tasted.

"Sis... Mom wouldn't tell you this but you gotta know. Inuyasha's... different. He's been waiting for you a _long_ time."

"That makes me feel so much better!"

He pointed impatiently at her plate and she shut up. "He's different Kagome. He's all quiet and stuff..." His voice went to a whisper as he added, "And he's not half demon anymore."

Kagome set her chopsticks down into her bowl and rested her forehead on her hands. She thought of the white dog, running down the steps. How else could he have lived for hundreds of years? How did he do it? Even more... Why?

"It's okay, 'Gome." Her whole world softened at that old pet name, and she peeked through her wet eyes and shield of fingers into her younger brother's face. He was no longer a little boy. His eyes were wide not with innocence but with understanding. "There's a lot that's changed, and there might be a lot more that's about to change, depending on Inuyasha... And you."

At that her hands fell flat to the table. Her question came as a whisper. "What do you mean, Sota?"

"What I mean is..." He twiddled his thumbs together and kicked his feet against the legs of the chair like he did as a child. "Look, I've missed you. It almost killed mom when you disappeared. But this would be different. We want you to be happy, y'know? And mom always had a little suspicion you'd done it already and that's why you never came home..." Sota ran his hand raggedly through his hair and gave a nervous laugh. "I'm not good at this stuff Kagome. You know that. I just... wanted you to know that it's... okay."

_"What's_ okay? Spit it out already."

Sota went back to twiddling his thumbs. "Inuyasha has a plan to—" He stopped.

Kagome stood, following his gaze to the window, where a streak of blurred white flit from view.

"Maybe he should tell you."

Kagome nodded, and left her brother staring worriedly after her.

She followed the white dog from the doorstep. He led her quietly, and soon they were beneath the tree, standing in a lattice of shade and sunlight, presently she found she was looking at a human again, as if it had only been a trick that he ever looked like a dog. "I had to do it," he said defensively. He didn't explain what he meant. She knew.

"But why?" she whispered. "You didn't have to wait for me, Inuyasha."

"Would you prefer..." he began, and took a hesitant step closer to her, "that I didn't?"

"Of course!" The glimpse of five hundred years of waiting assailed her again, and she felt she was choking on it. "I would have never asked you to." She wanted to close the gap between them in a childishly tight embrace but something within her knew this was a gap that could never be closed.

"Kagome." She stilled at the sudden intensity of his tone. "If there was a way to undo it... to send you back to my era for good, would you want to do it?"

Sota's words came floating back to her, and now she understood them. In a way. Sota had been giving her the go-ahead.

Would she?

"I don't want you to wait," was all she could say. Her voice cracked. "But I'd be stealing a life from you, Inuyasha. You've lived five hundred years, and sending me back would.. would change all of it! That feels so—so selfish of me."

"Kagome... There was a time when you came back here and grew up. You grew old. You were more than eighty years old when you died. If I send you back then I'm stealing that life from you too."

Despite everything, Kagome gave a small giggle as she wiped at her eyes. "Time is weird."

"Yeah," Inuyasha agreed, and matched her forlorn smile, "and love is pretty selfish."

"Do you love me?" she asked quietly. She knew the answer.

His smile didn't change, and it helped Kagome understand why what he said next wasn't exactly a sad thing. "I did," he told her.

Kagome wrapped her arms about herself. "Time is weird," she repeated. Her chest felt hollow.

"It's pretty simple, if you think about it. All we gotta do is choose. These lives—the one where I wait and the one where you grow old here—or... some other life. Where I send you back."

"We should flip a coin," Kagome suggested weakly.

"Stupid," he snorted, and for a moment it was as if all the years had never passed. "I already know what I'd choose. I've only been thinking about it for five hundred years."

"Tails it is," she said, and for the first time since waking from the jewel a true smile broke across her face, like a cresting wave.

Her family didn't seem surprised when she went to say goodbye. Perhaps Inuyasha had asked them what they thought of it a long time ago. Her mother handed her a duffel bag stuffed with odds and ends, and when Kagome poked through it curiously she found things that willed tears into her eyes: a family photo album, her childhood bear, even the ring her mother had once told her she'd pass down when she died... Kagome closed the bag. She could go through it no more right now. "Oh, mom," was all she could bring herself say, and embraced her mother for what might be the last time.

"I don't know if this will work," Inuyasha warned. "But I've been thinking for a long time and it's the only idea I've got."

"Inuyasha." He stopped, taking in her face. "If it works and I don't see you again—_this _you," she clarified, gesturing to him, "then thank you. For everything. For everything," she repeated at a whisper. Words failed her for the hundredth time that day. Words were never enough.

But he understood. It had been a very long time since she faded from his arms underneath this tree where they now stood, and he'd been chasing the mirage for so long he'd begun to doubt he'd ever reach it. But here it was; and it was real.

"I'll be seeing you," he said wryly, "in the next life."

As she moved in to kiss him, a small gesture of grace to the farthest corner of his mouth, he lifted the beaded necklace from his neck and in one smooth motion upended it around Kagome's. She pulled away, confused._ This_ was his idea?

But his smile only grew wider. "Kagome," he said slowly, his voice filled with all the apprehension and the excitement of a sure promise, "_go home."_

Before she could even think to argue that she was already home, the beads around her neck gave off a sudden intense vibration, rocking its way through her every bone to her core. Her hands flew up to grip at the beads in shock and she found herself stepping backward, falling, pulled by some unseen force until she was flying across the yard through the blinding sunlight—tripping and stumbling—until cool shade enveloped her and something wooden slammed hard against her legs and back.

She was at the well.

As she turned then in what felt like the slowest of motions, a warm wind blew its way through the shrine, though no leaves were rustled outside, and swept her long hair in flying strands across her face. Down at the bottom of the well there was no dirt, not anymore, but the most serene of blues, and white clouds roving slowly like circling koi. Her heart swelled. The wind picked up, pressing her to the side of the well, urging her onward.

She hoisted the duffel bag further onto her shoulder and turned for a last look at her own sky. A white dog was there at the door. She thought of the two most important words he'd ever said to her,_ I did,_ and her heart flew again.

She leapt, letting the warm wind blow her over the edge and into that sea of blue, that impossible sky. Maybe she should have said more; a goodbye. But it wasn't goodbye. Not this time.

This time it was hello.


End file.
